Tobacco pipe

This pipe has a short handle and a round, partially broken bowl decorated with vegetation motifs. It is representative of the type of pipe that was popular in the Ottoman regions, that is, made up of a small recipient to contain the tobacco and to which is attached a long stem.

A plant discovered in the New World in the sixteenth century, tobacco spread quickly to Europe and the Middle East but only became generalized in the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was apparently introduced by Portuguese sailors to the coastal cities, then spread by the soldiers and merchants throughout the entire Ottoman territory. Opposition to tobacco was manifested quite quickly, from 1511 and throughout the sixteenth century, with several fatwa issued against its consumption. An interdiction was imposed for the first time under the reign of Sultan Ahmad (r. 1603-1617), then under that of Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623-1640), to be lifted around 1646. These interdictions would be linked to the fact that the places where tobacco was smoked, the coffee houses, became places of sedition. Thus tobacco was closely associated with the consumption of coffee, another newly introduced stimulant, and became an everyday item throughout the Ottoman Empire from the beginning of the seventeenth century. The interdiction of tobacco was completely lifted in 1680 when the Ottoman authorities realized the potential value of tobacco as a source of revenue for the imperial treasury. However, fatwa against or for tobacco continued to be issued until the 1720s when the mufti of Damascus issued a final fatwa legalizing it. The consumption of tobacco was widespread in all classes of society, among both men and women. A guild of pipe producers was created in 1760 in Istanbul in the Tophane quarter. It was possible to identify the products of many workshops by their manufacturer's mark.

Tobacco apparently arrived in Lebanon around 1625, during the reign of Fakhr Al-Din (r. 1572-1635), which is when tobacco farming was undertaken. In Lebanon, the first pipes, dating back to the seventeenth century, were apparently imported from Turkey. They are similar to those found in Greece, Syria and Palestine. It was only in the beginning of the eighteenth century that local workshops started to produce pipes in Beirut, Saida and Tyr, which did not for that matter prevent the importation from Turkey of red terracotta pipes.

It is interesting to note that many fired clay pipe bowls were found in the digs at Hama, and others at Baalbek. According to the archaeologists at Hama, there is no doubt that the pipes are from the same period as the greater part of the ceramic artefacts (before 1401). It seems that their usage has been associated with the inhaling of narcotics and that this practice was ancient and very widespread, as attested by the pipe bowls found in the digs of the palaces of Cordoba, Spain, at the foot of the Sierra Morena, dating back to the tenth and eleventh centuries.